Reverse dieting weight gain

zfitgal
zfitgal Posts: 519 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I started reverse dieting and it has been going well. I got my period two days ago and today was my weigh in and I am at 3 pounds. I know its water weight from menstruation. My goal is to increase calories until I hit 2200 and maintain there even though my scale went up this week. Should I still increase another hundred this week? I’m currently at 1850 calories

Replies

  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 2,247 Member
    edited September 15
    Sure! If you want to gain weight.

    You said in your previous thread that you started that you were maintaining at 1700 so going up over 400 cal a day you’re going to gain fat
  • zfitgal
    zfitgal Posts: 519 Member
    tomcustombuilder wrote: »
    Sure! If you want to gain weight.

    You said in your previous thread that you started that you were maintaining at 1700 so going up over 400 cal a day you’re going to gain fat

    I will gain a bit of fat that I’m aware of but I will also be putting on muscle. I was also maintaining at 1400 too. I need to prime my body for a fat loss phase and unfortunately I’m not even close to that. I gave myself a 5 pound cushion…
  • zfitgal
    zfitgal Posts: 519 Member
    Sometimes you have to go back to move forward
  • sollyn23l2
    sollyn23l2 Posts: 1,786 Member
    zfitgal wrote: »
    Sometimes you have to go back to move forward

    It's your body. That's the beautiful part. You can do what you want with it. So just do what you like, see if it gets you results you are happy with.
  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 2,247 Member
    zfitgal wrote: »
    Sometimes you have to go back to move forward
    unless your overall TDEE outpaces your increase in calories you will gain fat. If you want to add muscle you only need slightly above maintenance.

  • zfitgal
    zfitgal Posts: 519 Member
    tomcustombuilder wrote: »
    zfitgal wrote: »
    Sometimes you have to go back to move forward
    unless your overall TDEE outpaces your increase in calories you will gain fat. If you want to add muscle you only need slightly above maintenance.
    I don’t think your understanding my situation. My body stopped responding to very low calories. The lower calories I went the more swollen, gi issues and hormonal imbalances would occur. I’m at a place where it wouldn’t be healthy to lower my calories to lose more weight. I was currently maintaining at 1400, the only way out of this is up. I am allowing myself a 5 pound weight gain during this time. I need to increase calories to put on muscle and build metabolism. And that’s what I’m doing. I went from 1400-1750 with no weigh gain. Now that I have my period I gained three. My question was is it smart to add another 100 calories this week or should I weight for water weight to go down? Or does it really matter?
  • SafariGalNYC
    SafariGalNYC Posts: 1,558 Member
    edited September 15
    If I wanted to gain more muscle mass - I would add strength training and make sure I had enough protein.

    Calories over maintenance - I wouldn’t do that unless I was working out really hard.
    I do 3 days of weights and cardio per week and I only add in extra cals if it was an intense workout.

    But… that’s my body… see what works for you. If the scale keeps going up… reduce the calories.
  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 2,247 Member
    zfitgal wrote: »
    tomcustombuilder wrote: »
    zfitgal wrote: »
    Sometimes you have to go back to move forward
    unless your overall TDEE outpaces your increase in calories you will gain fat. If you want to add muscle you only need slightly above maintenance.
    I don’t think your understanding my situation. My body stopped responding to very low calories. The lower calories I went the more swollen, gi issues and hormonal imbalances would occur. I’m at a place where it wouldn’t be healthy to lower my calories to lose more weight. I was currently maintaining at 1400, the only way out of this is up. I am allowing myself a 5 pound weight gain during this time. I need to increase calories to put on muscle and build metabolism. And that’s what I’m doing. I went from 1400-1750 with no weigh gain. Now that I have my period I gained three. My question was is it smart to add another 100 calories this week or should I weight for water weight to go down? Or does it really matter?
    you can add 100 increments however understand that when you change calories the effect isn’t immediate so if you add, sit there for at least a month before adding or subtracting again otherwise you may change amounts again prematurely. Your metabolism is fine and you don’t need to add many calories over maintenance to add muscle.

    To understand your calorie intake amount add 7 days worth and divide by 7 and that is your actual amount.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,598 Member
    zfitgal wrote: »
    tomcustombuilder wrote: »
    zfitgal wrote: »
    Sometimes you have to go back to move forward
    unless your overall TDEE outpaces your increase in calories you will gain fat. If you want to add muscle you only need slightly above maintenance.
    I don’t think your understanding my situation. My body stopped responding to very low calories. The lower calories I went the more swollen, gi issues and hormonal imbalances would occur. I’m at a place where it wouldn’t be healthy to lower my calories to lose more weight. I was currently maintaining at 1400, the only way out of this is up. I am allowing myself a 5 pound weight gain during this time. I need to increase calories to put on muscle and build metabolism. And that’s what I’m doing. I went from 1400-1750 with no weigh gain. Now that I have my period I gained three. My question was is it smart to add another 100 calories this week or should I weight for water weight to go down? Or does it really matter?

    Honestly? I think you're overthinking this, or at least at risk of doing so.

    What I think, as a person with no particular right to an opinion about what you should do ;) : If you're feeling cross or unhappy or stressed about the period weight gain (even though you intellectually know it's just water weight), then maybe hold off on adding another 100 calories until you see how things look for at least a week or two post-period. If you're totally unconcerned about the period weight, sailing along happily, don't change your plans on account of it.

    That's just an opinion. You know more about your body than I do.

    I think that if reverse dieting is going to work in general, it's going to be a nuanced kind of a thing. Usually, we'd tell folks to go whole menstrual cycles before changing calorie intake, in order to get a reasonable multi-week average effect of a given calorie level.

    You're trying to inch calorie intake up faster than that. Will that work? You don't know; we don't know. Will it be possible for you to get it up to 2200, whether by X date or even ever? You don't know; we don't know. It's an experimental kind of thing.

    I'm not trying to be unhelpful here. But I think you're adopting a plan that inherently includes a fairly high level of uncertainty, but I feel like you're wanting to know "the right answer". What I'd like to be able to do is reassure you that you're going to be OK long term, but I feel like there are degrees of "two steps forward, one step back" that are going to happen. That may be stressful, but I hope you can find a way for it to feel emotionally OK.

    Nothing that happens here in what you're doing is irreversible. Some of the steps may take a few weeks for the results to clarify, because the impacts are small and slow. That means you may sometimes take a mis-step. That's OK. You can adjust when you see those results, if you need to do so. I'd suggest you don't want to get too . . . impulsive? twitchy? . . . about day to day weight changes, and think more about longer term trends.

    I wish I knew what to say to be reassuring, truly.

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